WPP's e-commerce service expands with supply chain and logistics

Dive Brief:

WPP today (April 25) launched Everymile, a fully managed service that provides brands with an outsourced direct-to-consumer (DTC) e-commerce solution, per a press release. WPP claims it is the only company in its sector to offer such an end-to-end solution.
Everymile adds demand generation, online trading and merchandising, supply chain and logistics capabilities to WPP's existing e-commerce capabilities around strategy, customer experience and technology management.
Everymile is built on a proprietary tech platform and draws upon the offering of WPP's Cloud Commerce Group. The launch follows previous efforts by the agency holding company to shore up its e-commerce capabilities to build on growth in the surging sector.

Dive Insight:

WPP's launch of Everymile sees the agency holding company bolstering its e-commerce offering by providing brands with a first-in-class, end-to-end solution that manages the entire process through to delivery — an uncommon move for an agency that could pit it against e-commerce providers like Shopify, as Reuters notes. Consumer adoption of e-commerce accelerated during the pandemic, making it a key growth area for brands and their agencies.

"Developing DTC capabilities is a strategic imperative for brands today, but we know that getting it right is complex," Everymile CEO Mark Steel said in the press release.

Everymile seeks to manage the entire e-commerce process for brands, from the first click on a website that it has helped target audiences find through ordering and delivery. The goal is to enable brands to deliver DTC commerce simply and cost-effectively, per the press release. Everymile also seeks to help brands overcome the challenges of e-commerce, including lack of customer data and management of multiple third-party vendors.

The platform will give brands full ownership of the online brand experience and valuable first-party customer data — a key need for marketers amid a tightening data privacy landscape. In a sign of the synergies that a holding company like WPP can provide brands, WPP agencies will partner to integrate creative and media solutions to increase reach and scale of e-commerce efforts.

Everymile is built on a proprietary platform that is based on the offering of Cloud Commerce Group, a UK-based tech company that specializes in multichannel e-commerce software that WPP acquired last year. Cloud Commerce Group helps brands market, sell and deliver products on platforms including Amazon, eBay, Etsy and Wayfair, and merged with WPP's Wunderman Thompson Commerce offering as part of the deal.

Demand for e-commerce, alongside digital marketing, media and technology, helped WPP notch its fastest organic growth in more than two decades, per its most recent earnings report. WPP reported full year like-for-like revenue increased 13.3% in 2021.